n loose during the night without anybody noticing the
accident. Luckily, I had not chosen either of these to sleep in,
nor had anyone else. I cannot help thinking what my feelings would
have been if I had found myself adrift far behind the launch.

For several days more we continued going up the seemingly endless
river. Human habitations were far apart, the last ones we had seen
as much as eighty-five miles below. We expected soon to be in the
territory owned by Coronel da Silva, the richest rubber proprietor in
the Javary region. I found the level of this land we were passing
through to be slightly higher than any I had traversed as yet,
although even here we were passing through an entirely submerged
stretch of forest. There were high inland spaces that had already
begun to dry up, as we could see, and this was the main indication
of higher altitude than had been found lower down the river. Another
indication was that big game was more in evidence. The animals find
here a good feeding place without the necessity of migrating to
distant locations when the water begins to come through the forest.

At a place, with the name of Nova Aurora, again consisting of one hut,
we found a quantity of skins stretched in the sunlight to dry. They
were mostly the hides of yellow jaguars, or pumas, as we call them
in the United States, and seven feet from the nose to the end of the
tail was not an unusual length. Although, as we learned, they had been
taken from the animals only a few weeks previously, they had already
been partly destroyed by the gnawing of rats. A tapir, weighing nearly
seven hundred and fifty pounds, had been shot the day before and was
being cut up for food when we arrived. We were invited to stay and
take dinner here, and I had my first opportunity of tasting roast
tapir. I found that it resembled roast beef very much, only sweeter,
and the enjoyment of this food belongs among the very few pleasant
memories I preserve of this trip.

While they were getting dinner ready, I noticed what I took to be a
stuffed parrot on a beam in the kitchen. But when I touched its tail
I found that it was enough alive to come near snapping my finger
off. It was a very large arara parrot with two tail feathers, each
about thirty-six inches long, a magnificent specimen worthy of a place
in a museum. Parrots of this particular species are very difficult
to handle, being as stupid and malicious as they are beautiful. They
often made